What To Do While You Wait For Your Paid Ads To Work

A quick coaching session for Justin Guarini from American Idol, which will hopefully help you as well.

On today’s episode Russell gives some advice to the members of 2CCX about how to fix a funnel if it’s not converting with paid ads. Here are some of the the helpful hints you will hear in this episode:

How to keep the momentum going even when paid ads aren’t working.

Why people who listen to podcasts are the best buyers.

And how hitting the podcast circuit made Russell change the title of Expert Secrets.

So listen here to find out what kind of advice Russell has if you’re feeling frustrated by your paid ads not converting.

Full Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. I got a special treat for you guys today. So, I found my 2 Comma Club X group, we’ve got some amazing entrepreneurs. One of the people who signed up this year was Justin Guarini, who is the dude who was on the first season of American Idol. He took second place to Kelly Clarkson, and then he was in the movie Justin and Kelly… I guess it was called. Then now he’s the Dr. Pepper spokesman, a bunch of other cool things. He’s a super awesome guy. He jumped into our community recently and then came for Lucky Live and joined the coaching program. He just launched his very first funnel. Anyway, it’s fun watching him geek out, and it’s super cool. Today he posted his funnel of live, actually a couple days ago, his funnel was live. Today he posted basically his ads aren’t working yet and he’s not sure what to do, and a little frustrated. Super positive still, but just kind of like, “It’s not working yet.”

Today I just really did a quick Facebook live into 2 Comma Club X groups, specifically to him, but to everybody. I thought it was really good, and some really important things for you guys as well. I’m going to just post the Facebook live here so you guys can listen to it. It’s about 20 minutes long and the whole theme of it is what do you do while you’re waiting for your paid ads to work. If you’ve been ever stuck in that situation, hopefully this episode will help you out a lot. Thanks so much and I’ll keep the theme song. When we come back, I’ll go directly into that Facebook live. Thanks everybody.

Hey, what’s up everybody? This is Russell again. Hope you guys are doing amazing. I know this is me going live twice in six hours, but when I’m on a roll, I’m on a roll, right? No, I’m just kidding. Last night, I went live and talked to you about some of the cool things I’m planning and thinking about for 2 CCX. And then, this morning I woke up, and I was going through my feed, and I saw the post that Justin made about his funnel going live, and the ads not working yet, and him being frustrated, and his post is really good. Hopefully you guys all had a chance to read it. I started sitting here this morning as I was taking my kids to the office, and I was like, “Okay, if Justin was sitting here, and he came to my office, what would I tell him? What would be the very first thing?”

I had an idea and I thought it was really cool. I want to share with you guys, so I hope you don’t mind. Is it okay if I just go live real quick today? My inner circle meetings start here in 30 minutes, so thought I would just take a moment out and insure it was, because I think it would be helpful for a lot of you guys, especially in a lot of you guys who are in this coaching program. You’re here, you’re on a budget and you’re trying to figure things out.

You spend all the time and the effort, the energy, going in, creating the funnel and the offer and getting it live and then you do all the work behind that. Which takes time, especially the very first time out the gate. The very first time you go and you do all the work and the effort to create it, and so you spend the time, the energy, the effort, you get the offer done, the hook, the story of the copy, all this stuff, the funnel.

You’re like, “Okay, now it has to work,” and you’re nervous, what if it doesn’t work? And you put everything into it and then you go and you put a Facebook ads and Facebook ads are the greatest and the worst thing at all, because you go write the ad and then you go get submitted and approved and put your money and all kinds of stuff. Then you wait and then something happens, the day the ad gets approved or you spend $100 and nobody buys anything. Or you spend $1000 nobody buys a thing and you’re like, “Ah.” And you’re like, “I don’t even know what to do now. Do I stop the ad? Do I change the funnel? Do I change the offer? Was the offer bad? Did I screw the whole thing up?” And all this fear starts coming.

That’s where a lot of use get to, and then you’re like, “I don’t know what to do.” And then you’re like, I’m out, or I’m going to bail, or I’m going to want to lean in like girls keeps saying, but I don’t know what to lean into. What do I do? Where do I shift? That’s where a lot of you guys are at. And that’s what Justin posted yesterday or maybe it was this morning. First of all know that I feel for you, I know that pain and that frustration and that fear and all the things that go into it and you’re like, “Man, I spent three months building this. I don’t even know what to change or what to write.” Then there’s that fear. I wanted to step back and give you guys some, some advice and hopefully some hope and belief because it’s definitely the pieces needed right here in the journey.

What I would say is, first off, it’s interesting now this funnel, I have a to funnel hacking live as you know my keynote intro presentation, I talked about the different phases of business, from going zero to a million, million to 10, 10 to 100. The whole thing between going from zero to a million is by far the hardest phase, I think. It’s also the most exciting, I love the startup phase. That’s why I love the coaching, I love that piece of it. But what’s interesting is going from zero to million, the biggest things you have to figure out, there’s two questions to figure out. The number ones is what am I selling? It’s not what do I want to sell? It’s what does the market actually want? That’s the first thing. The second thing is, how do I sell it? So the what in the how?

I was talking about what am I selling it? How am I selling them? Part of the what is initially, it’s a guess like, “Okay, I’m guessing this is it, maybe this is it.” And you put out there and you just hope that it’s the thing and sometimes you know about the hands, boom, the market is like, “That’s what I want,” and they freak out and is really good. Other times you put it out there and the market, doesn’t really want it or not very many people and that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged. For me it took a whole bunch of what’s before I hit click funnels.

14 years of what’s, but what’s cool about it is each of these different what’s you’re putting out there, can increment a lot of success where you’re growing your list, customers are buying, more people get to know you. You create the next thing and the next thing and they all build upon each other to like boom, something hits. Don’t freak out. The very first thing you put out there doesn’t have to be a million dollar winners. Just the act of getting out there, because the very first thing you put out is the hardest because you have to learn all the steps. I had to learn how to build a funnel and drive copy and do a hook and an offer and create a product and do an E-cover and put it. All the things, and I always tell people, my very first product I ever created was a software product called Zip brander.

Looking at Zip brander as a whole was a complete failure. I think I’ve probably sold 200 copies Max, but at the same time it was the biggest success that I’ve had because it was the first time I did the whole process from a to z, where I bought the domain, got graphics design wrote copies, created a product, start a driving traffic, made a few sales, and even though it wasn’t my million dollar thing it was like I did the process once and the second time I was like, “Oh, this is easy.” I already know who I’m getting for copies, doing design. The next part became really easy. Every funnel after that, I kept doing funnel after funnel until I started having some big successes.

First thing is just the fact that you got the first thing done. That’s huge, that’s the what, the second is how, what am I selling and how am I selling it? That’s the second question is how do I sell them? Ideally the the end goal is I want that Facebook ad, I can scale, I can just spend $1,000 a day and then make 5,000 a day. It’s just rolling. That’s where we’re all trying to get to, but the reality is, and I want to step back for a minute because the reality is paid ads. Well that’s the holy grail. That’s what we’re trying to get to. It’s not always the first thing, in fact, I didn’t do paid ads in my business for the first decade, which is crazy.

10 years of my business before I ever paid for that. It’s interesting because nowadays we always leave, go to paid ads. The reason why is because as soon as you can get paid ads to work, it’s the holy grill and life becomes super easy. But it’s not always the easiest thing at first, especially right now where you create the ad, you put the time and effort and energy in and then like, “Oh, are you going to pay for the ad?” And then like “It didn’t work” and then like, “Oh, what do I do?” And you tweaks the ad in then you wait again another day. Especially for us entrepreneurs who our momentum driven, we’re trying, we’re moving, the momentum is what gets us going. Running Facebook ads when they’re not working at first it’s the opposite of momentum.

It’s like you hit this brick wall, I put it behind me. If you hit a brick wall and like, oh, and then you change the ad and you try it again. It’s like, oh, I hit a brick wall. And it’s like you lose this momentum. It’s this huge let down. Right. Justin I felt that I was reading your post stages just like, “Oh, I did the work, the effort and the ads aren’t working and I need the momentum to keep me excited and motivated but the momentum’s gone because the ad’s not working and I don’t know, do I change the offer [inaudible] pages to the add.” All these things. So what I want to do is I want to step back because, if I was looking at traffic strategies, if I was starting a new business, the first thing I probably wouldn’t do is Facebook and I shouldn’t say that.

I would start Facebook ads initially because I want to get that working as fast as possible. I wouldn’t give up on that. I would keep doing that, making the tweaks and the changes. During that process where you’re waiting for your ads to hit, where your waiting for it to work, while you’re waiting for the slowness of initial grind, while you’re waiting for things to hit, you don’t want to stop momentum, you want to keep the momentum going, otherwise you’re it’s going to be frustrating. For me, it’s, what would I do if I was starting over from it right now? Let’s say I put together a book or an offer or a landing page or whatever I need. I need traffic coming. Waiting for Facebook ads to work, what would I do right now?

For me, what I would be doing right now is I would be going old school. In fact, it’s funny, I’m writing the traffic secrets book right now and literally last week worked on this chapter. It all comes down to the dream 100. What’s the concept of the dream 100? Dream 100 are, who are the hundred people that already have your dream clients all in? Who are those people? Then how do I get from their audiences for free? In the book I talk about this two ways to get into the dream 100. Number 1 is you buy your way in, and number two, is you work your way in. If I was to do this today is I would start with podcasts. Poddcasts is the channel I would choose initially.

I’m going to say a couple things. I’ll wrap it into a bowl that will make more sense. I would start with a channel of podcasting, because obviously we have Facebook, we have Instagram, we have youtube, we have all these things, but podcasting is by far the channel I would lead with. The reason why is podcast listeners are the best buyers. These are my dream audience. They are the reason why I run my own podcast. The reason why I go on other people’s podcasts, podcast listeners are the best buyers by far. I read a study and I’m going to script the numbers, but it was the average human who listens to the radio makes $30,000 a year, and the average human who listened to podcasts makes over $100,000 a year. Just by the fact that they have the podcast app on their phone and they are listening to content, makes them a better, how do I say that it’s rude to say, but it doesn’t make them a better human.

You can be a good human and listen to music all day, but they make them a better buyer, better consumer. They make more money on average and they’re into development, there into learning anyway. They’re your dream customers. I’d do is I’d say, okay, I’m going to focus on the podcast channel and you think about any movie. Like when Avengers Endgame came out, which by the way, was the most insane movie of all time, so good. What happened? Watch the rollout. What happened is that they were basically they build the dream 100 for them it was TV shows, So it’s like, “Okay, who are all the shows?” And that obviously marvel studios was buying ads, they were on Facebook, they were on youtube, they were on TV, they were buying ads for their show.

Then they sent all of they’re attractive characters out to go and work their way in. They were on Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and The Today show and Good Morning America. They were out there doing the circuit, getting the free traffic. They’re not doing the free stuff while marvel is doing the paid ads. While you’re training your paid ads to work, you should do the same thing as going out there and working your way in, getting into the circuit. I would go to the iTunes directory and any podcast directory, I would go look through the top 100 in every category. Of all these different podcasts who are the people that already my dream customers listening to this podcast. It doesn’t have to be like… For me I wouldn’t say just people in the business category.

I would look at business, personal development. I would look at different categories. Because again, podcast listeners are all, if they’re listening to podcasts, they’re into personal development, which means they’re into all sorts stuff. I would go and I’d make my dream 100 lists of here’s the top 100 podcasts I want to get on. Then I was thinking, now my job, my goal is to get on all these podcasts. What’s going to happen is while you’re on these podcasts is a couple of things. Number one, this is free traffic, you’re not paying to be on these podcasts, you’re getting on to be interviewed, so number one, it’s not costing you money. Number two is something you can be doing every single day so it’s continuing momentum as opposed to buying an ad. You’re writing out in the city, I can waiting and like nervously tapping your fingers, waiting for the thing to happen.

There’s something active you can be doing to move forward. Number two is that you’re going to have a chance as you’re on these podcasts to be interviewed, to start listening to what are the phrase that people ask? What the questions they’re asking? What are people responding to? What are they not responding to? I was talking to Nick Fitzgerald yesterday and he did an event right before funnel or before on the 2 Comma X event and he said it was interesting. Today as I was going through my content. He’s like, some things he is like, I felt it, I felt that I could just hit it, landed people connected with it. I was like, that’s something that most people miss when they’re just doing paid ads. What are the things people connect with?

When you have this live platform, it’s fascinating how quickly you find out, what are the things they hit? What are the things that don’t hit? Even if you’re just one on one, in an interview with somebody, by you just sharing your message over and over again, you start finding and refining like, “Oh man, that’s the thing that the host, like his ears perked up” or I felt as I was delivering that I can feel the energy of that statement or that phrase that got people excited. You start learning those things really quickly. If you go out and you do a podcast, five podcasts, 10 podcasts, 30 podcasts, 50 podcasts, by doing that, you will learn your what so much better. What does it that I’m actually selling? What does the market actually want? So many times I’ve had a product that I tried to sell, like the expert secrets book for example. You may not know this, but the first thing I did is Extra Secrets Book came out is I did the podcast circuit.

I went into the dream 100, pulled out every single podcast owner I could find. And I started going out there. And what’s funny is if you bought one of the first 5,000 copies of The Expert Secrets Book, the title of the book was The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Mass Movement Online. Because I was like that was the title, that was the what and as I started in the interviews, I really quickly within the first three, four years, I realized that that subtitle did not connect with people. No one wanted to build a mass movement. I was like, oh. And every time I brought that up, it was just like, okay, but it was just, it didn’t feel right.

I don’t know how to explain it other than that. It was wrong. I’ve learned that very quickly in podcasts and I literally, after like six podcasts, I messaged the publisher, I’m like, before the next printing we’re changing the sub title. He was like, ‘You can’t do that.” I’m like, “We are freaking doing that.” Because I found out from the market that is not what they want. They do not want to build a mass movement. The book can stay the same, but the hook initially has to change. We changed it from Expert Secrets, The Underground Play book to building a mass movement, people who will pay you for your advice. That was the old subtitle to the new one, which is the Underground Playbook to find your message, build a tribe and change the world. In fact, I know who was my top, I think I came to just five or 10,000 copies of the first run.

I know whenever people share on Instagram or Facebook, “I am reading Russell’s book.” I know when they bought in the cycle because we literally change the title of the book after hitting the podcast circuits. Because I found out that the messaging was wrong and I wish I would’ve done that before I wrote the book because the first 10,000 copies of the cover has a different subtitle. You guys probably didn’t know that. I found out that that was the message that resonated. People wanted to find their message. They want to build a tribe and they want to change the world. That was the messaging that for the rest of the launch and has been going on for the last two years now. I didn’t know that until I hit the podcast circuits. We’ve sold tens of thousands of copies of books through the podcast circuit.

A couple other things on podcast. Number one is Facebook is like if you’re the DOTCOM secrets book, I talk about cold traffic, warm traffic and hot traffic. Hot traffic is your own buyers. That’s the people that are the best, they start moving down the spectrum. I would say the next best buyers after your own traffic are podcasts listeners, because they may not be your hot traffic, but they are definitely more than warm. They’re listening to somebody talk about something every single day. Plugging into the ears, podcast listeners are amazing because they’re listening during the most intimate times of your life. While I’m on the treadmill while I’m driving. You have different access to somebody’s mind in a podcast that any other format. It is by far, I think the best delivery mechanism is podcasts.

The hot traffic is your own customers. Next is podcast traffic and then it goes down to whatever. Like Facebook ads are warm to cold. Because you’re targeting based of interests. Like, “oh I know they’re interested in Tony Robbins and business, now, they’re going to see my ad.” But those are just warn people. They don’t know who I am, they don’t have an intimate connection with Tony Robins specifically. Maybe they liked his page and so because they’re seeing the ad, whereas podcasts, listeners, you know that they subscribe, they listen, they plug in for 15, 20, 30 an hour a day to listen to the content. That is like… And you know that just the fact that listening to podcasts, the average podcast listener makes over $100,000 a year.

So you know, they actually have money and you have a format where you don’t have five seconds of the ad try captures attention, you have a longer 15, 30, 60 minute time to build the relationship with that audience before you push them to go to your free plus shipping or your book offer or your Webinar or things like that. Again, there’s so many channels and dream 100 we’ll go deeper throughout this year and as you guys get The Traffic Secrets Book, things like that, we’re build June 100 channels like crazy. If I was you guys right now, especially just in listening to you, but anybody like this message is for him, but it’s for everybody right now. I would say, “Okay, while I’m waiting for my ads to work, the next things I’m hitting the circuits just like I would if I was launching a movie, I’d be on Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning America, Today Show” all kinds of stuff.

For you the equivalent of that is the podcast circuits. So it’s going to iTunes, going to any podcast directory, going through the top 100 top 200 top 300 of all these different channels and going into there and you may think I like, “Oh, I’m not going to get on top 10 po… You don’t have to get on top 10 list of the podcast. Right now, my podcast gets anywhere from 10 to 30,000 downloads per episode. I’m not in the top 250, I have enough listens to, but for some reason iTunes hates me. I don’t know why they used to love me. I was in the top 10 lists for two years and then they slapped me and they won’t even listen to the directory and that sucks. But my podcasts still gets insane amounts of downloads. Even if you get into a podcast, it’s like 250 or 500 or maybe something listed.

It does not matter. It just matters that you’re getting out there. You’re going to find your voice, you’re going to find your message and find the hooks, the angles, this is your time to learn and present and be able to figure out what it is you’re selling, how to sell all those intricacies of your message will be learned during this podcast circuit. Then like I said, even if you’re in smaller podcasts, they may have 500 people or so, if you have some of those 500 people are their best buyers, their best listeners, people are connected. If I was starting over from scratch, that’s what I would do. In fact, if you watched the launch for mastermind.com with, with Dean and Tony. Dean literally did 60 podcasts interviews to launch that thing.

That’s how we launched initially. First steps 60 podcasts interviews. When a Tony Robbins launch Money Master the game. 220 interviews in podcasts, radio ad TV before any paid ads. When traffic secrets books comes out, guess what I’ll be doing first? The podcast circuits, it is where I would begin with so while you are buying ads and trying to figure that out because again the ad part is going to be frustrated and you’re going to lose momentum if it doesn’t hit initially and I do not want, I need you guys lose the momentum. You need to be running as fast as you can. Every one of you guys. What you need to be doing right now is going into the podcast directories, building your dream 100 and contact him saying, “Hey” and don’t mass email them all.

“Hey everyone put me into podcast.” Listen to each of their podcasts and then put in the time and the effort. I listen to a ton of podcasts because I want to make sure that when I get on the show with the podcast host I don’t look like an idiot. I be like, “Hey dude, I listen to your podcast is awesome. My favorite episode, when you interviewed so and so. That was super cool.” Hey, by the way, I’ve got a really cool message. If you want, I love to be on the podcast, I could talk about this, this and this. Those are the ones people returned your calls. There you go. Podcast is it. It’s like the secret nest of the best buyers on the Internet are all sitting there, plugged in listening to stuff every single day. The best thing about podcast hosts, almost all of them are craving content.

They’re looking for people to interview. It’s not hard to get on their shows. You just got to have an interesting story and then pitch the story to them. Even if I was trying to get on TV, I’d be like, “Hey, put me on the news tonight.” Like why? Because I can tell you three things about how to blah, blah. Justin for you, you’ve got so much street credit already. Just be like, “Hey, I’m going to show you guys how to land auditions, the struggles I had, I’m going to tell you guys behind the scenes of how I got an American idol and then how I got the Dr Pepper commercial.” That’s an interesting interview. Anyone would be like, “Oh my gosh, that’d be amazing.” It wouldn’t just be… There’s so many categories that would fit underneath.

It’s not just one category in iTunes. There’s so many categories and you can be on 30, 50 interviews and next 30 days if you just went out there, start hitting the circuits, contacting them, listening to them, listen to part of someones podcasts, message them directly. “Hey, love your podcast. I love the interview. I think I would love to do a show with you if you’d be interested. Here’s some things I can bring the table, the stories I can tell.” Like I said, most of these people are craving content and your story, it would be amazing. There you go. Hope that helps you guys. I got to jump. I got an inner circle happening right now. I just wanted to message just before I got started today because I saw justice message. I know he’s not the only one struggling with this.

A lot of you guys are, and hopefully this gives you as a shortcut, even if you don’t have an offer done yet, go hit the podcast circuits. If all you have is a landing page with the opt in form, go and hit the podcast circuits. They are the secret honeypot of buyers. They’re sitting there waiting for you. While you’re waiting, again Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube ads, that’s the holy grail. It’s what we’re working towards, we want to get that because we can set, because that’s when you guys sit back and like these things running and then making sales for you all day, every single day.

Right now, while you’re waiting for that to hit, now’s the time to do the circuits. I appreciate you guys. Hope it helps. Have an amazing day. And like I said, next week I’m going to start dropping some cool stuff in here for you guys. I’ll let you eavesdrop into all the Comma training, so appreciate you, excuse me, all my internal training with my team, so appreciate you guys, have amazing day and we’ll talk to you all guys soon. Bye everybody.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.